


Carnations of Lions

by relp



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mentioned Niki | Nihachu, No Angst, Oneshot, it’s only like one sentence, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 17:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30109698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relp/pseuds/relp
Summary: The best place to have a talk about the meaning of beauty and life has always been on the wall of an old gamekeeper’s cabin.1800s dnf au
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Carnations of Lions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rileybearzz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rileybearzz/gifts).



The wildflower field was in a bright midsummer bloom, sweet and succulent over the wood’s floor. A smattered canopy dotted shadows over the soft butter grass, smudged with edges disappearing into folded flowers. The game keeper’s cottage, a sloping clay fired brick structure with windows precisely punctured into its side framed by carved oak, sat close to the wall, half abandoned and beginning to overgrow. A short wall sectioned off the wedge of prairie, colts and prized horses drinking water from the buckets hung low on the opposite cobbles.

Two men, straight out of evening services and adorned in neat suit jackets and plain slacks, lazed on the eroding wall. Well worn and neatly sewn fabric crumpled into the cracks as they lay quiet in each other's arms.

Dream sighed, and rolled over, squinting at the sun. “It’s beautiful today, isn’t it?”

“Excellent beginning to a conversation. Honestly, completely memorable. You might as well have just asked me about the weather.” George flipped over and flicked his nose.

“I know, I know, bad start.” Dream paused, and then smiled. “It’s beautiful today, isn’t it?”

“Oh my God-“

“Pastor wouldn’t like you taking the lord’s name in vain.”

“Pastor wouldn’t like a lot of things about me. A prime example of which,” George smirked. “is you.”

“Okay, sure, true.” Dream pecked George’s lips. “But isn’t it beautiful today?”

“I’d say that’s subjective, but I’m sure you’d disagree.”

“Oh, don’t be like that.”

“What? I’m right.”

“Don’t” Dream gestured to him, peeved. “be all huffy.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Fine.”

George picked at his collar, observing the cream field. “It’s okay, I guess. Could be better.”

Dream glared at him. “And how, exactly, could it be better?”

“I don’t quite know. I’m sure you have some halfhearted reason about how this is all perfect and we should be admiring it like a herder lords over a flock of sheep.”

“That’s not nice”

George interrupted him, snarky. “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

Dream continued on. “But sure, I have a reason.”

“Oh, I’m so intrigued.” George half sat up and stared at Dream, taunting.

“You really want to hear it? Or are you just getting a kick out of mocking me?”

“You know what, sure, explain. I’m curious.”

“Okay,” Dream cleared his throat. “You sure?” His eyes flickered across the houses penned up on the other side of the wall, tall and filled out.

George nodded. “I’m sure.”

Dream paused, and gave George a knowing smile. “It’s the honeydew sun that makes it so beautiful. It drips across the sky, across this field, across your face.” He kissed Georges’s scrunched nose to his scoff, adoring and sincere. “Can’t you taste it? Burnt sugar like how Niki always makes her snickerdoodle cookies, the ones that singe the roof of your mouth? Ivory roses like the ones,'' he stopped to pluck a flower from the bush. Gently, carefully, he delicately tucked it in their flaming carnation hair. “that adorn your crown, pure and unfolding?”

“Yes. I see.”

“Only see?”

George continued. “And I feel and I taste. But you are wrong, faulted in arrogance.”

Dream clicked his tongue. “And what am I faulted in? In this brisk summerside evening, what possibly could be more swallowing than the sun? What could be more tasteful than that darling picnic, sewn into the clouds, rabbits across a blue meadow?

“You see only the brightness.”

“Oh? And yet” Dream waved his hand across the sky, dragging his fingers through the soupy gold. “what else is there to see?”

“My dearest lion. It’s the growing skyfall.” George sighed, laying down in Dream’s soft felted lap, digging his fingers into the edges of the sky. “Do you see it chasing away the cracking dusk, splintering the sky into glass panes of a wondrous tapestry? The stars are twinkling in the splinters of the church pews, the preacher hurtling us through the sky with stories of great myths, Orion the hunter and the giant bear.”

“I guess.”

“That’s a good start.” George looked up, chirping robins painting a quiet rumbling as birds flitted between the twisted oak.

“Sure.”

George leant up and planted a kiss Dream’s forehead. “Can I ask you something?“

Dream stared into the melting sun. “Okay.”

“Have you smelt the cosmos?”

“What?” Dream titled his head down, looking inquisitively at George.

“Have you smelt the cosmos?”

“I don’t follow.”

“It smells of wilting daisies on a hot porch, lemonade spilled across a deep hickory. The washcloth of time wipes it away, sticky and damp, the remnants of solar flares and supernovas. It smells of lavender soap, lathering and bubbling on paper thin porcelain. It smells of trade deals and tea, of spices and leatherbacks, of open plains and wild mustangs. It smells” Catching his breath, he traced the younger man’s eyelids, examining his face. “of sweetcorn eyes, and of pomegranate pomade.”

Dream pinched his eyes closed, crows feet forming bunches on embroidered skin. “I see.”

“You should.”

“I still do not follow.”

“Why?”

“How can the mirage of the mountain of gilded stone be bested?” Dream opened his eyes, drawing George’s hand away from his face. “It cannot be.” He shook his head, dismissive.

George nodded. “It cannot be, yes.”

Confused, Dream fiddled with George’s bay locks. “Then what lay behind your intention?”

“They are equal.” To Dream’s incredulous look, he huffed. “Is that so unbelievable?”

Dream drew his hand to George’s face. “I am not quite sure.” He admitted. “Can you explain, love?”

“They are in balance. The sun chased by the mares of moon, the moon chased by the chariot of sun. Deep stars painted clouds at morning’s hew. The deep ocean of sky breaking into the chasm of the depths. Without either, without this change, there is no revolution, no reflection, no trueness. The lion has to spare the mouse, and the mouse the lion.”

Dream pondered this, feet kicking against the mossy cobbles. He smoothed the pleats of his sandy tan blazer, unbuttoned at the ends. The ivy grew on the cottage quite quickly over the red brick walls, he thought, it’d have to be cut again, before it conquered the building, and drew it, eventually, to dust.

“I see.”

George grabbed Dream’s face, running a stilled finger down his rewoven jaw. “I know you see. Do you agree?”

Dream stilled, and rested his hand on George’s chest. “I agree.”

George smiled, bright and a true blue. He stood up, rolling off Dream, and dusted off his pale dove coat, the fabric pilling. “Well, good. You agree that it’s all subjective then too.”

“Come on,” Dream whined. “Admit it! It’s absolutely extraordinary.”

“Now, why would I do that?”

“I have agreed to the beauty you describe! It is correct, as am I. And it is absolute, and in this absoluteness comes this perfection.”

George closed the gap between the two. “Then you have deeply misunderstood my motives, dear.”

“What have I misunderstood? I have merely repeated what you have said.”

George looked into Dream’s eyes, furiously calm. “You have not.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“This revolution, this cerulean hunt,” he breathed. “is not beautiful, it is terrible. Horrific in its intention, and fierce in its pattern of sameness.” George picked the rose out of his hair. He plucked at the petals, falling like meteors to the ground, methodical. “Look at it go! The terror of this flower, the annihilation. It will repeat, for all of eternity,” he threw the center of the bud to the floor, reverent. “for when I dig my heel into the dirt, it will grow again.”

“But isn’t that extraordinary? That it will return?”

“No, the way it grew to return, it will be forgotten. And the bush that fathered it, it will be forgotten all the same.”

“Good.”

“Good? By what do you mean by that?”

“I mean good. When it is gone, who needs to mourn it? Would you rather people go into turmoil over the simple destruction of a flower?”

“It would not have made a mark, if it was forgotten.”

Dream tutted. “You don’t know that. It could have born the seeds of the most beautiful vine to ever exist, it may line a shined pine casket, or be given to a new life.”

“I disagree.”

“I am well aware.”

After a moment, Dream shimmied off the wall and rested his hand on George’s shoulder. “As much as I enjoy this conversation, we really need to head out, don’t want the groundskeeper to get suspicious, now do we?”

“Oh, we shan't do that.”

“Exactly. Now, come on dear mouse, I think Niki’s making cakes.”

George smiled. “The chocolate ones or the godawful wildflower ones she tries to make each year?”

Dream shuddered. “If it’s the second I’m feeding them to the hogs.”

“Oh, come on. You think the hogs will eat that?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“I think you’d poison them, Dream.”

“You’re probably right about that.”

George grinned. “Of course I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I finally cracked under Riley’s pressure. That’s half disappointing. Anyways, wrote this because I felt mildly bad about destroying Riley in 8 ball, and had an old title/prompt lying around in a doc. They also didn’t win the scavenger hunt for this fic, so that has to mean something. Pretty self indulgent with all the mythology references and the descriptions but whatever.
> 
> -S


End file.
